art by Mattthew Skenandore

Two Stories by Alexandra Howard

Author's Commentary

This writing is based on an experience
in Chicago during which the winds reached 70 mph, frequently knocking
people down, among other things. I arranged the text around the
outline of a building to emphasize descriptions while also
correlating movements and activity being depicted. My chosen content
focuses on the vast history engrained in the streets of cities and
all the activity that streets guide, as well as the pressure
sometimes felt from the ideologies of city planning.

Street Ballet

ACT
I

Merchant
danseurs and ballerinas flood the first stage of morning, not so
noble or virtuous in movement tightly dressed of success. Pin stripe
costumes and sharp white collars keep their coffee hands cold.
Newspaper hats on their heads and numbers on their eyes. The echoes
of their shined shoes and block heels fade away to resound all around
the sky high troupe towers and deep below the underground tunnels
while a symphony of car engines and wheels on rail fill the street
air above.

ACT
II

Allegretto
joggers add brief sweeps of wake to the static A.M. rhythms until the
academia performers and blue collar acrobats interweave with shop
keepers and dog walkers, fat pigeons and old talkers, all gliding
around and around dressed in a medley of outfits. Scattered trills of
telecommunication and random words of past and present break up the
fuzzy transporter stream. This dance is bright and brisk yet slow
moving en masse to an ascension. And since trained by interest and
obligation choreography, they flower out into different areas of the
city as the morning scene concludes.

ACT
III

Enter:
Early noon shared solos of young mothers and eager tourists. They
walk their children around the block or dine in authentic restaurants
just opened for the day's service. The shop keepers stay idle in
center stage while everyone of every kind from everywhere, moves
swiftly around them, going in circles, dressed as clothes, books,
jewelry, accessories, furniture, antiques, decorations, or whatever
other personal needs and wants. Dancers dressed as park grass and
slides emerge from side stage to lure the mothers and children from
the launch street while tourists climb up the city attraction props
wheeled out from all corners and sides of the theater platform. The
stage lights slowly dim out as the shuffle clears and curtains close.

INTERMISSION

An
announcement triggers the audience to rise from their seats in a
thick crowd to wait in long lines for vendor foods and drinks before
the next act of the day begins. Whether they be students, blue collar
or white collar, actors, artists, friends or family, they come
together in the designated general lobby area to talk of so far and
the afternoon's scheduled performance. As the time scheduled for
break shortens, the crowd thins out to return to their seats.

ACT
IV

The
curtains open to a chaotic scene featuring a towering clock
background, small hand five, big hand twelve. Automobile orchestra
plays horn honks and idle engines while the stage is covered in every
type of dancer and the violinists play bouncy notes of relief but the
bassists thumb a thick and heavy beat. Titled "Reverse Morning"
in the program, the scene of ballet city folk leaving their day
duties and intimately passing by each other with cold straight faces
is a densely intense climax of regressive undertones. Some dancers
are quick and violent in their spins and movements, others are soft
and graceful, steady or dazzled. Again, since trained by interest and
obligation choreography, they flower out to their respective corners
of the stage to unwind in dressing rooms after an exhausting scene.

ACT
V

Enter:
evening walkers and shoppers and eaters, leisured friends and lovers
and stoop dramas on stair props. There are no more sounds of machines
or fast feet, just flowing mellow voices, background music not meant
for listening, and the occasional bursts of children laughing and
darting out from unlit areas of the stage. This final dance is the
most organized and the most complex, everyone is in the same center
of different places; in and out, up and down, around and around. The
rhythm is steady and relaxed for a wandering density, until the night
brings everyone home to a curtain close to ready themselves for
tomorrow's curtain call. Bravo brava. Good night and good luck.

Author's Commentary

With
a balletic approach, I wrote of a day in a metropolitan city from an
observational point of view. Using performance art as the framework
allowed me to connect the world of ballet and the world of
street/city-ness in terms of culture variation, organized chaos, and
captivating beauty.

About AlexandraHoward

Words, sounds, and visions from the
hungry eyes and blooming brain inside of a funky monkey. Somewhere in
the jungle, she minds her flowers for the winking roses of open ears
while under the influence of everything experienced.

published April 3 2011

Two Excerpts from the unpublished novel The Strike by Harvey Thomlinson

The Border Trader (Extract from Chapter 12 of The
Strike)
He wondered whether he was dreaming. The sticks
persisted at nearer intervals in the empty blueness voices. The door
sprang open unexpectedly Vladimir and Dmitri were there with a woman
he almost called out in a hotel uniform. They faced down the three
men at an unconcerned pace vanished through the door mouthing
threats.

Vladimir approached the bed was splattered with blood to
examine Pytor wiped his eyes. The hotel attendant apologised
repeatedly a blow fly settled on the ceiling saying how lucky he was.

“Lucky to be alive.’

The woman left and the three men helped Pytor move his
sore leg wasn’t as bad as thought. After a while he was able to
pace the room from side to side they examined him. He tried first one
leg and then the other according to inclination they directed him.
There was a stiffness in the vicinity of his left hip he realised
that that the icy streets of the town would be murder.

“We warned you.”

The night before they’d had told him about the trader
from Suifen with one leg missing in the hospital over there. He’d
been set upon in the icy streets beaten in the snow after the local
hospital had to amputate there were always going to be consequences.

“You need something.”

They was snake still fiery in a flask Vladimir reminded
Pytor that he’d promised to help his cousin Katya buy shoes. The
night before in the Far East Hotel Vladmir had been drunk as a fish
chasing slender waitresses behind the bar with bad skin. Pytor
decided to go although he’d have to look out for his enemies his
head ached and throbbed.

“One for the road.”

On a fine winter morning they descended past the third
floor brothel red corridors with naked carvings had kept him awake
all night. Late breakfasters ate pickled vegetables beyond the lobby
streets white and cold as metal. By the hotel queues of donkey carts
and yellow were forming embedded in the ice was black from age. They
waved down a cart outside small clusters of languages were thawing
out the up and down day.

“The border station.”

The train had just arrived at the station bluely dust
releasing a mass of their fellow countrymen and women. As the sky was
high in the air hundreds surged onto the frosty street with its
engraved hotels carrying red and white striped bags. They stood and
waited for Katya few were going the other way until they found her.

“You guys must be blind.”

She was Katya had risen early that morning heading for
the train in a snowstorm black pigs riding to the border. Although
the world wasn’t breathing she had eaten a boiled egg before
setting forth her husband’s feet were warm and hairy. A square blue
car was abandoned frozen at the border she crossed twice a year as a
buyer for her sister’s small shop.

Hospital Visit

(Extract from Chapter 14 of The Strike)

They held each other nervously Little Hua looked through
the door. There she saw a confused space of metal bed frames and
tubes trapped her father.

When Little Hua approached her father at first she could
hardly believe there was no room to put a chair between the beds.
There was the familiar smile of shy pleasure door half open as if he
was embarrassed to show feelings.

‘You’re here.’

She wasn’t sure what to say as she sat on the edge of
his bed a doctor in a blue gown looked through the door. Somehow she
was afraid that she might see something like death in his eyes he
cleared more space for her. All her life she’d feared that he would
be dead skin and bones before she could make him feel loved he waved
his hand.

“Sit with me.’

Selflessly as the others in the ward watched he made
room for her in what looked like new black striped pyjamas. There was
a pile of peel and shells on the dresser she was afraid to show any
emotions that the nurses should have cleared away.

“Nothing, nothing.”

She rose again to clear the clutter he said that it had
been a minor stroke sweeping everything into a small bin. She knew of
course that several of her father’s family had just dropped dead
afterwards she opened her bag before the age of sixty.

“I got cold, you see.”

Family history always played a part apparently he’d
fallen ill on a bus she produced the herbal medicines. She’d made a
special hospital visit to get these pills that the nurses probably
wouldn’t let him use anyway he thanked her quietly.

They sat in silence he’d long hated talking about
himself. She loved this modesty of his was not the style now seeing
him helpless with all these sick people she would die. While time
continued he lay there attached to a catheter they’d always had
this mysterious bond.

‘You must get better now.’

As a child he had always protected her when they visited
the toilets nights the temperatures yellow icicle-rimmed concrete
block were often twenty or more. She’d feel nervous crouching above
the frozen hole steam rising as the wind stirred dead papers in the
corners her father whistled. The walls and floor were deathly cold to
the touch she tried to keep her balance as she shat or pissed.
Afterwards she’d run all the way back to their smoky brick room
with her father howling ghosts chased her.

Author's Commentary

‘The Strike’
is an experimental novel set in a depressed factory town in the far
North East of China. The novel uses a
linguistic strategy which aims to subvert expectations about the
correspondence between syntactic and semantic structures.

She was Katya had risen early that morning heading for the train in a snowstorm black pigs riding to the border. Although the world wasn’t breathing she had eaten a boiled egg before setting forth her husband’s feet were warm and hairy. A square blue car was sat abandoned frozen at the border she crossed twice a year as a buyer for her sister’s small shop.

A key part of the strategy of this
novel was to undermine conventional implicatures of sentences,
allowing a more complex range of meaning relations to emerge.

I saw this town as being a world where
memory and expectation pull in different directions. Some sentences
place complements of time and space in ambiguous positions on phrase
boundaries.

“With her
hair pinned in a scraggly bun she saw everything riding through the
dark night of history to pass the time there were adverts on the
walls.”

Others do something similar with
conjunctions, which play an important role in
establishing semantic relations between clauses.

“Their
town was standing up although the gates of City Hall remained closed
their voices rang out unanswerably.”

In my view, experimental writing should
seek new ways to give aesthetic form to subjective experience.

She wasn’t sure what to say as she sat on the edge of his bed a doctor in a blue gown looked through the door. Somehow she was afraid that she might see something like death in his eyes he cleared more space for her.
“Sit with me.’
Selflessly as the others in the ward watched he made room for her in what looked like new black striped pyjamas. There was a pile of peel and shells on the dresser she was afraid to show any emotions which the nurses should have cleared away.
“I got cold, you see.”
As a child he had always protected her nights when they visited the outside toilet block was often twenty or more below. She’d feel nervous crouching above the yellow icicle-rimmed hole as the wind stirred papers in dim corners her father whistled. Afterwards she ran all the way back to their smoky brick room with her father ghosts chased them.

I wanted to create new syntactic
structures that were mimetic of the chaos and
indeterminateness of the universe of my characters.

About Harvey Thomlinson

Harvey Thomlinson is founder of Hong Kong-based Make-Do Publishing, which publishes fiction by some of Asia’s best contemporary writers. Harvey's translation of Chinese novelist Murong’s novel "Leave Me Alone: A Novel of
Chengdu" was a finalist for the 2009 Man Asia Literary prize. Harvey’s novel ‘The Strike’ is set in a depressed factory town in the far North East of China and uses a poetic linguistic form which has been described like an ‘invented language.’ Extracts from The Strike have appeared/ are forthcoming in journals in the UK and US.

published April 7 2011

Prosetry by Nicholas GriderPart of a book-length project of imaginary encyclopedia definitions of random words

COUGH SYRUP

Minerva save us from the cloying syrup of coercive compassion!

–Camille Paglia

The only good doctor is playing doctor. The homemade remedy is art therapy. Maybe someday you’ll grow up to be an outsider or a cowboy. The architecture of childhood contains a lot of blind corners. Sadness contains a kernel of marketing. Futile resistance comes with side effects and super-sized flopsweat. There may be a way out of here after all, there may be a hand to hold somewhere under all that personality, there may be a chalk line separating right from wrong. Disease is like obscenity: memorable novelty. You call for an honorarium for the doctor in the house. You hose down the sanatorium. You call the shots.

TELEOLOGY

Nature does nothing in vain.

--Aristotle

The timeline is little bent. Slanted after enlightenment. The cultural anthropologist hides in the office park and uses a zoom lens. Your culture forgets a few words. You see culture on TV, reduced to vamping and knuckle-biting. Reliving your past, caked with dust, carefully arranged in public storage. One thing leads to another, people polish their memories, people notice trends and guess the future consists mostly of similarity, of eschatology, of rigged contests. A vote for the service industry is a vote for the apocalypse. The end of history passes by unnoticed, history itself reclaimed by the forest, the forests felled and pulped to make Watchtowers and street tracts. Sad songs, dark clouds, and mass-produced signs say the end is nigh. All signs of the times point to “what else is there?”

ANXIETY

Our “Age of Anxiety” is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s job with yesterday’s tools—with yesterday’s concepts.

–Marshall McLuhan

This house has one room only. This night for one night only. You braid guesswork into weekends, you get pleasure to rust, you lose your sense of taste. Sign of the times. A small winter in May. You moved there to get away from the noise, you moved over for him, you are often moved. You hesitate early and often. That’s not what you do with a bed. This is not what you do with hard work. Perpetual motion. The rise and fall of luxury and science. There is no such thing as an educational emergency, even as emergencies continue to evolve and spread. Where feral is a frame of mind, where people in evening dress smoke cigarettes as the ship sinks. Where somewhere on a battleship Cher sings “If I Could Turn Back Time.” The lights are on but nobody is home.

Author's Commentary

Culture: A User’s Guide

These poems/pieces come from a book-length manuscript that acts as a sort of imaginary dictionary or field guide, hence the title. While at CalArts in the MFA program I became fascinated by the wealth of “famous quotes” you could find in Bartlett’s online. Rather than incorporating them into text, though, I decided to choose some general words, find quotes, and write experimental texts that were a response to the word and the quote but not in a narrative or illustrative way. Once I started, words in the first pieces suggested their own “entries” and the project became self-generating, with words I chose for pieces used as later subject headings/titles.

My primary interest as a poet is to try to leave normative language structure as-is but play with the most banal phrases possible to try to make something rich out of cultural detritus, and this project played into that by imagining both common and uncommon words as terms that could be defined not by explanation but by response and continuation into a project that could theoretically cover every word in the English language.

About Nicholas Grider

Nicholas Grider is a writer and artist whose work has been recently published, or soon will be, in BathHouse, Experiential-Experimental Lit, and Blue & Yellow Dog.

published April 19 2011

A Trip to the Storeby Will MacBride

Thoughtful Young Man took a trip to the store, the store, the store, to get some juice. He up, up, up and strolled outward toward the door. Entry is an exit going into forever more [never the same upon return] and he rolled by dark interiors on and into all the outdoor.

Musician trees that big and greening lurch in stations moving by some sunny breezy, breezing, breeze. He began to walk the earth in treading bouncing footfall comes back up and down then up and down then up in knowing going on.

And it’s over there he ruminate three blocks and over two although he didn’t know this moment’s map because the picture, picture, picture of his laughing distant friend from college time.

There it claimed attention’s what it did his friend said laughing “I donno I guess it’s bloody” and then laughing with a bottle in his hand to place upon the plane of dirty dormroom table scene of smoky tales and buddies stubbly from a party also laughing girls in jeans tight canvas over denim over curves like ass and thighs were also laughing did she hurt me what it’s ok now.

The cars were passing quickly in a deadheat modern bourbon rush to crush the land a man a can or cup. Look up!

And wait now there’s too many wait a time just angling for a chance to cross a frontier trodden all through time and dirty gum and speed oil stones and splotches hum of bees and engines.

Here it opens interluded there he now goes ambling like a modern hipster cross the street. Sidewalk now and blocks of stores and doorways now he’ll march a while as though within your dreamt of acted time.

There he sees the awnings, eaves, and bricks and all the windows with reflections demon like he thinks to try to sell me all this what and what they do not know. Or I mean that’s why. These dark things in the window like they seem to be so bright to try to sell. Damn like fuck this fuck this hell. Then again they seem so kind and lost like someone schizophrenic trying to give a gift.

Hey there here comes Pete and there’s that girl I saw the other day at that café that’s by the woods or yeah I mean those trees of all of spacetimes’ planted endless parks.

“Hey there Pete what’s up?” he cried into the spring Pete slows five paces forward looks and then the girl whose head was turned she moves in linked awareness turning too. They land as boats to dock and plan ideas converse with Bill a thoughtful man.

It went like that a little while and then like: “Later see ya, yeah the next time,” and the thoughtful man he went along now turning to the ancient giant journey all are on. Feeling all the pain but still it finds a moment of perception every time and pounds along it’s always knowing where the hope like news is introducing.

Soon the store swings distant into coming view. Larger it approaches thoughts of tortured war worlds that he’d had along the way and also excellent love worlds now he’s coming now and coming now and brings attention to the door.

In he goes a new agreed on dreamroom yeah it’s cool in here. Aisles of mind are products aisles are shifting he’s progressing toward the cooler glass. Grubby chubby fellow but a longhair at the counter like a writer or a drinker maybe coffee or potsmoker in apartments by the rain like Simon Garfunkel and so that’s what Bill noted moving on and so then “How’s it goin?” softly said the man behind the counter to the moving flashframe Bill.

“Hey!” he answered traveling with a rolling phrasing newly phasing gait. Do it sharp and friendly like I like you but I’m working, walking, buying so I keep it sharp to task and just let’s get it.

Bill is coming nearer the reflections of the cooler door he grabs the chromey handle with his right hand and he pulls.

“Fuck it let’s get OJ.” This he mumbles in surveying all the stacks. Grabs the cheapest carton thinking distant as he’s turning of the girl with Sandy Sandra hair and all the oranges there.

Steps up to the counter where the money is encountered and then counted to be sure it is all there. Small talk with the hippie writer man he makes while paying for the coolish carton handing over hand.

“This your day job?” bold enough to ask because it’s easier in these days of information and connection era days.

“Yeah you got it right I do some lighting for a band.”

Bill was walking home and watching street geometry and thinking of the friends he’d made. Seeing how connection kinda shines away the pain. Why not simply do that more and do it all that way? Yeah there’s lonely tortures but there is another way.

Getting home he’d found the house had changed and gone a little further into day.

Author's Commentary

This piece is in the rhythm of walking. It makes unmistakably clear how rhythm plays into and thought, language, and action. I’m a musician so this comes naturally to me. It even surprised me how naturally and easily the words came in rhythm. Almost as though rhythm is some innate quality of verbal thought, and the events it describes, that escapes our notice. Rhythm is an innate quality of everything in the phenomenal world. We’re surrounded by visual, sonic, somatic, linguistic, technological, natural, and planetary rhythms and beats. Tuning back into a simple pulse clears things up in an eerie way, causes the awareness to entrain with it and can cause deep sorts of shifts. It is not surprising that drums have traditionally been used to produce many altered states.

About Will MacBride

Will MacBride is a musician, writer, carpenter/ handyman, woodworker/sculptor, sometimes graphic artist. He was born and grew up near New York City, he has traveled the world, and he now lives in St. Paul Minnesota. He is a cool guy. He has many personalities. He is fairly strange. He is a gentleman. He is a knower and a not knower. He is a prince. He is a hippie. He is a pauper. He is a teacher on assignment to “help wake them up” etc. He is radiance. He is a worker. He is a poet. He is a philosopher. He is a quantum system. He is an evolving energy phenomenon. He is all. As are you.

12 Flash Fictions by Brian Michael Barbeito

The Astral Snow

Thumping water and then the pink and blue, and those were the astral snowflakes. The horizon was there, but it stayed pure and waiting while the crows flew and landed. After them, a bird shaped as they were, but caressed in strange accents of yellow and orange, went across the sky and dissolved beyond a rooftop. This was like a meteorite, but travelling in a straight arc, a bee-line as it were, that somehow swayed. Then...puff. There was the Mexican on the bike, and he was far from home- almost continents from home- but riding in the midday sun, down the street from the world, because you are always down the street from the world until you get there. He had no hands on his handle bars, and his soul had travelled many inroads and out roads to get to there- to simply peddle like that in the sun. Echoes from crowds far away, strange crickets by the glen, the departed spirit of the feral rabbit. The dimpled one, the one that put small wooden dolls under her pillow to solve problems while in the dreams, said that it might have simply become separated from the elder and then run into fright. Hmm. I told her that that might be true, and wondered if rabbits had mild sounding auditory vibrations in the left ear. Then the crows again. The world pregnant with omens. Kick. Blue. Shotgun hearts. Camels and embers. Crowns. The spirit travellers said that it was okay, that it was not bad, because the crows were flying away. Yes, they represented ego, but ego flying away was alright. Every time sitting in those chairs with spine erect, there was a light and gentle shaking of the spirit as it rose and aligned itself. Snowflakes. They were purple and pink. Splashes of lives. You. You are not even from here. And she. She is too involved in this sort of thing. She has to move from here to other pursuits. Glass. Glass and blood. Books with the bags. Skin. Jewels. Eyes like time. You came from a far, far away place. Maybe like a meteorite. My calloused hands forgot to use gloves. Limestone screening crushing oil and the lawns of words. Water can wet the senses. That dog barks at clovers. The bikes of dusk. The old crates that waited and once were discarded. When the thumping water and then the pink and blue arrived, I knew everything might one day and in some way be okay. But it would be a long ascent through lives as old crippled farm women that had seen many natural disasters, though wayfaring stations where the benign Mexican rode bicycles, through yards of strange birds travelling, and through more.

Flowers for Salvation

The hanging basket can save your life, inspire, or prop up the bodies and make winter forgotten, because that was where the angry cold stayed- unforgiving- magnificently rough and terrifying. Those baskets on the steel poles hanging like quiet fairies, or like good bright growing phantoms in the day, becoming solid, incarnating into the world. There is water and light, and the sounds of traffic like bigger water and that is the soundtrack of nature. Inside are Star Lilies and terrariums, or the large and sure black metal tamper that hits quietly against the earth trying to make a home for rocks and bricks and ways. Reaching for the light always everything in its own way. Foreign currently in the pocket and the slow salt water. The hanging basket glows after the rain but the hose water does it well too. There are somehow flashes of yellow in the world, like slow falling petals, and they are soft, calm, and brighter than the sun.

Murals by the Sea

Stocks and wires, or the crescent at night. Blueberries and the slow cat wanders. Big and stretching were the horses, and the wild one might sit on the rain fence, in yards new, where the future begins. Oh gold and bronze, and the large auditoriums where the summer sits forever. That city is dread, and the other purely just dead. Kick some cans and we stood in a long line, but the lines dissolved and the parachute landed on the roof. Candy and the ice, or the bizarre testimonials of crickets. Catch the water. Catch the music. Silver watches. Plastic horses and rubber hoses. Liaison. Forgetting. Prints. Old clapboards crying in pain. Hey, look- what is that? There is an echo and it’s not she. It’s just the remembrance of her ways- coming and going like the feigned ways in the faded paintings and murals by the sea.

Stucco Walls

There by the porch, and the hanging baskets or the chimes now quiet, I wondered if we would ever see the way of the south again, when we walked down those streets. There were alleys that housed firing ranges and that is where the snake shot bullet was found on the ground, and beyond there were streets where Jimmy knew about the highways and the department stores in the night and old pop machines brave and sturdy and sure. Out front of the houses were worn boulevards and everything looked like magic though it was slow and weary at the same time. The bright statue of Mary, in blue and white garb, and she is stepping on a snake- but there is a hornet nest that has infected this statue. The mango and oranges and papayas. Some people had the fast remote control cars with the shocks and the wheels that actually had air you could refill- jumping off of curbs- and the same type of thing in the Northern place, in a converted rink- with dirt hills. We walked all along those streets, by the Catholic Church, and for once a church at night was actually infused with light, a light you could sense and touch and taste and see. What a time, a time so bright that it became out of time, and stood forever- will stand always- as itself- bright. Bright. Wanting nothing. Needing nothing. Fulfilled. Big drinks from the vendors, and the flashes of bats through the skies. Old women in earth tones. Slow, slow, slow went the world. A fire had started- a fire that was vibrant and on the inside of the world, lighting it- the world lit up for one moment and it was as if any question could be asked and the answer received- the funniest thing being that you didn’t at a time like that have the need for any questions so suffused you were with only the appreciation of grace. We fell from the head to the heart, and in so doing we rose higher than the dancing flames themselves. Porches of silver. Porches of gold. The history worlds. Anoles making their way across walls, into bushes, sometimes looking out. Who are you tall human? Who are you there in the walkway of the grand and slow but vibrant dusk? The night chirps with laughter afterwards, and no matter what, there are always the cars in the distance that remind of the liveliness of the sure and well world. I wondered if we would ever see that place again, or walk down its streets in white sneakers when the world loved us we were in love with it.

Avadhoot in Worn Cotton

Calm and green the curt outdoor carpeting and the wind like that from the seas. There is a woman that is full of knowledge and smiles as the kites float through the air. There were wire cables in the rain that stayed in the sky while sometimes birds lined up on them. They flow through skies in the hundreds up by where the highway ends and were a lively crowd of particles and life and expression. The hawk on the pole- stoic- waiting always, for something and an undercurrent of electricity ran through everything. There was love and music in the carnival, and it meandered out far to dust and brick, or the avadhoot man with the worn cotton shirt, holding skateboard decks and bearings, stickers or trucks, tools...and thinking about capillaries of stone, green rocks, like aventurine, malachite, and moss agate with white. Strings of lights in the quiet night, and the sound of water on roofs. The pressure brings a headache, but he looks at stained armoires or the mowing lawns of love. The carnival is there and everybody wants to go. Something about the possibility and the ancient newness of the electric lights at the end of the world on a Saturday night.

DNA

She wanted to know how I had managed to meet that lady. ‘You met her,’ she gasped. The lady that I met was a strange and elusive soul, and they had wondered, so said the medical records, if she had a learning disability of some sort, or was simply traumatized by the entire thing. At the end of the records it said that that it was suspected she was smarter than she let on. I told the truth, and always told the truth. I told the truth so truthfully in fact, that on more than one occasion I was accused of lying. See, nobody really came forth with the goods that way; nobody had blown open and damaged their crown chakra like I had, by being so exposed. So I was already always dying, and dying of my own ailments plus everyone else’s. In any event, I relayed that I had just asked to meet for coffee, and was not interested in anything more. She felt unthreatened. If that is a big secret psychology so be it. She meandered in, and it was a sunny day- but in the poor part of the city. Poor by almost any person’s standards. She wore jeans and a sweater too heavy for the weather. I asked her a few questions. I asked her if she remembered the name. She guessed, and got it wrong. She asked only one question, and that was if I grew up around horses. I said I didn’t know anything about horses. She looked genuinely surprised. They had told her, she said, that I was to be sent to a farm, and grow up in the open air. Darting eyes. Dread and pollution. Karma. Guilt. Whiles. False light. Hidden. Thick. Slashes of grey. Emerald green rosaries. She had to go cook a ham. Reality was a crunch and a glow and if it was thick as pea soup, then it was thick as pea soup. She just wanted to lay eyes on me. And there is hardly any psychology to that at all. A queer thing though, was that I was always comfortable in those surroundings. The grime and dust, the quiet fortitude of the crying buildings, always an awful brick of yellow for some reason, and you could see their tears, you could see the aged and the sun exposed it all without fanfare. The floors of a place like that did not have a chance, because one thousand metropolitan day soldiers walked on it. Linoleum sadness and generational badness. The lie was beginning to fall away, and in its place was the white gypsy woman with slightly crazed eyes that had to go cook the ham. Outside one of the bells chimed on the door as they do, and she sauntered off to the left. I saw that there was a golf course across the street, and wondered at that, because I didn’t think a golf course would find a home in a neighbourhood only one step up from a ghetto. But you never know where things can end up.

Running Grapes Rocks

Forlorn pants and her salty long stare, or the whiles from the apple cotton jewellery. Gaining are the trucks, and the cabs have lights while running boards go forever in the great and cool dark. High is the summit and the grand little mosquitoes talked about our doom while cherries float in the river and stream. Silver watches and the boards have nails, or the radio men and the dreams of laughter. God how the angels talked and tried to send that message, of springs, and small parts, and the message was that parts fit together and work, that everything will move and go together like the springs. That shade of blue, that Plexiglas like a good omen and we ate popsicles in the middle of summer, not knowing that blue would be gone a long time. Her dress, and the way she walked, or the surfer with a rope on a tree in the flood, and the yellow cars move up and down the dusk roads. How fallen are we? Lost to the brightness and the ground, and lost to the centre of the round. Glowing grapes and the September plums. Looking through black wrought iron gates, and sitting on balconies. There is a two thirds rule. There is a universal rule. There is a slide rule. There is a golden rule. Mildew books and the old man in the hat, or king cans of beer and the workshop clothes. Running and running, where tuna fish stay. Big Barracuda and the deep sea reverie. Now and then an electric light queen walks though a carnival and black hair of that regal one shines, and it is known that what was once might be once again. Amethyst and Ametrine, Malachite and Serpentine, and her eyes like the father of God.

Low Audio Spectre

The way the night was then, in those years, was that the leaves passed by the bricks and the winter wind howled when it was snowy, while in the spring thunder tumbled and afterwards summer, a quietly raucous and deliberately joyous thing, hovered forever. And one time, in the witching hour, a young phantom appeared before me. He was transparent and about four feet tall. Movements were abrupt and pleading, and he was talking nonstop, though at first he was slow to begin. But I couldn’t’ hear him, and only sat and watched. The room was alighted, and he swayed back and forth a bit. I realized the enormity of the scene, and panicked. As I began to get up, a sad expression came over him, and he begged me not to go. I ran and when I got somebody and told them to capture him, to see him. Terror in the journey to incarnate. Terror in leaving the old plane. Unfinished and important things to do. Misunderstandings. Murder even. Accidental death. The seer said he was a drowning, and that he did get to the other side safely, that he had identified with me and sought help, and besides, it was all local. Dress and decorum of the body and life path. The mind and pure, like some suede peach or proud orange in the brightness of day, the absolutely and impossibly preternatural bright day, and you arrive upon it all as out of some shadow and while it is good it is still unsettling. But my friend made it and is better off now. I would have done him a good turn, but was too startled. Since then the leaves pass by and the winter wind roars making way eventually for wetness from upper realms, and tinkling and shining parts, like the grasses and splashes of colors from the flowers, of long summer moments. If any phantoms roam or run, slide or talk, gesture or call, they are overshadowed by the elements and even against logic by the purely still and silent afternoon.

Tires

The problem with tires like that is that you when you have double wheels on the back you need not only a special insurance, but you have to renew that insurance more often than you would have to regularly. I thought about that, about the trade off between money and time, and things. We were headed through a parking lot, and he said to just reach over and grab a tree, and drop it in the back. I didn’t reach over and grab a tree. Maybe that kind of theft is victimless, and maybe without the energy exchange of money, you paid somehow, and maybe if you got away on paper, a shadow came over your vibration. But we did steel other things, and it felt right, there in the night by the old sky that was now becoming new again, and the gravel, the bricks, some old chime from the distance sounding like the angels were passing through. I had thought that down by the ravines the forest devas and water sprites were dancing. I had thought that one day we would be old men, and drinking beer in the summer humidity. I had seen this in some imperceptible way- I had seen electric lights, and the light from inside eyes, I had seen a mountain scene, where the sun was a good blood red, and the snow was a neon white, while some woman, now come back, had eyes like time- that shone just like time itself...and she had come to say with her look that, ‘ I am here, more encompassing than Gaia, more knowing than the most wondrous and wise of archetypes, and more in love than the melting snow, the deep and robust July night, or the most dazzling yet grounded of autumnal hues and songs...’ And I looked at the tires also, hip and strong and somehow defiant, enduring, like we ourselves and us.

Seeing the Earth Again

There was an ancient nunnery and the long grasses got moved by winds as they seemed to sit forever by the walls. Those long grasses wild and yet at home seemed to know something, and you caught them out of your eye the way you see a flash of light, a curtly and delicately formed cloud that is stronger and stranger than the rest, or the purple group of plums that have bloomed in the September rains and sit by the fences where long ago crickets moved and the dog looked out barking at phantoms. The campus in the rain of morning, and it was wild and graceful that she could smile with her eyes like that, denim and dimples, Texas streets and the gaiety of thraldoms upon meeting the dusk. There is an antique piano- from the Dominion co., because one day the world was calm and orderly- the keys being impressed upon by the rightness of skill and heart and grace. Silver bands of gold and rings for the river, or the psychic pain sharper than obsidian, reflecting off of the hurt spirit. Deep old funereal and down the street are the little stores- generations are like different worlds- and each wonders at the last put it is only a passing thought. What to do that we saw glory and the purity of youth, innocence, and happiness? Nobody cares now. Everybody wrapped up in problems and the souls’ crushing and troublesome path. I’ve got things to do. He is a candy ass. There is no new science news since those boys figured out that if you drop something- it falls down to the ground. And another thing- there is no more resources in the world than what is already in the world- one pile of dirt equals one pile of dirt no matter how you dress it up and what you do with it. Police. Blood. Injury. Walking. Kundalini arriving unannounced like the bride that was made for you. And thirdly- when you die you are worm food. Dust to dust. Now let’s go to church. The old glory of the cross, and the priest’s monotone voice. She was out there, somewhere, in Mexican denim chain-smoking and looking at the sun- simple and profound- short- ready. Fire. Rain. Silver. Horses at dawn. The traffic. Shooting firecrackers up at the sky through pipes. He is dead. There was a gun but he didn’t use the gun. Get that firearm back. Cover our asses. I remember when he used to skip off work saying it would rain, and there was no rain. I remember when we tried to fish off docks of gold and I thought the quiet soulful motels by the palms were glorious, more glorious than a cross- look- the supermarket and the drug store- look- the woman with the pills...look- there is the sandy mildew beautiful bookstore and its by the sea- outside and down is the bar...there is always, always a fire sign woman! , the old man in the cotton clothing and the wool hat- stealing oranges form the trees- the visions of the holy, the waves, the nights, the fact that the lady said, ‘...oh...oh wow...you are not even from here...I have four angels I work with...but I don’t even need them to tell me...you are not from here...you are from a far, far , and faraway place...’ and she was almost frustrated at it...and little did she know how right she was. But the quiet and good earth always waited, and I love that old earth anyhow and anyway and always.

Waiting

I was waiting there for her and it was as if a miracle had happened in the desolate secular world. She had arrived so many times like a vision, only not being a vision; she was like a miracle of miracles. And I first saw her from the back, and her neck was what shone, the way the hair is held up, but fall there lightly like when it first starts to rain and only a few drops show up, and it is a like a strong hint that something is going to happen. Waiting there in the humid world I noticed again that there were spirits trapped in the doors. This took no special perception or discernment at all, and was plain as day for anyone to see. And large spirits, many of them. Nobody ever talked about it, and they were so ‘there’ that paradoxically, nobody noticed it. This was on the high end of bizarre. The type of bizarre that reaches proudly to the sky like a healthy evergreen. Gates. I thought of gates. The rain. I thought of the rain. Tires on black asphalt cut through the wetness and the new white demarcation lines on the asphalt also. Like the time when the streets by the beach were almost vacant, and the two bumped into one another and I saw from the car window that they were already in love- in a flash, like lightening or a smile in the eyes, like a newly cut grape or the music coming through the summits at night from the man that sang and sang the melodies and we never saw him or met him but loved the sounds nevertheless. Eventually she arrived, and she had a sly yet innocent grin. She was protected by certain spirits, like a friendly but naive dog might sometimes be. There was the energy of delight, and the strong colourful impressions on the mind from lilacs. The shell of the Mulberry had started to show green here and there. Waiting. The hallways were thick with reality. Waiting. The slope of the world went down to where she would come from. Would it bring her up? Waiting. Somewhere an old stand by the side of highway sells berries. I remembered raspberry yards and the old woman that had a cotton dress and wandered through the paths to pick the berries. Waiting. Travelling along roads trying to carry a quarter-pipe, or searching for salamanders. Waiting. So many cars and the clouds would open up and let loose the violent summer rains on the heads of the world. She had other worldly scents, cheekbones like an Indian from a story or photo, and a step that was not only a step because there was nothing prosaic about her. Trees reaching to the clouds. When that wind comes, that last wind before the storm, you are alone.

Everywhere

Those cold and unforgiving suburban streets in the city to the west- and the construction sites abandoned to the deep and deadly cold night. The world could break and crumble and crack for the cold then, and everything was shades of gray but then there was a slow wild ravine and always the grey and black squirrels or the spiders while the armies of ants ascended and descended trees. Only the bay and harbour in Martinique and the world like a still picture, large mountains of trees, men that had built shacks and the colder men wherein the heart was archaic and full of pain- yes the Martinique world of the mind-shot sky and the dream clouds or bits of rain like a scattered pin prick and the iguana waits there by the boats...friendly smiles...ladies and men with dirty blonde hair and skin kissed by the sun turning vessels around and the large ship waits like time waits...and then goes. Go. The Haitian workers in the trucks rumbling under palms and coconuts and the large terra cotta buildings- the morning alive and full of glory like the Puerto Morelos pelicans moving through the high high high high high air but in the night, before the storms, the feral cat skirts in and out of the shrubbery and tables of silver wait like the ocean waits like the deep and rooted trees wait like she waits like the old three legged dog wandered from shop to shop from shell to salt shakers from shapes to souls from shambles to sunshine from sheds to sails from ship to shore. And what does the dog know anyway?

Author's Commentary

Experimental Writing and Lucid Fiction

These twelve pieces of lucid fiction represent a type of writing that evolved out of necessity. In regular or orthodox writing so-called, I found that the most interesting parts were always the flashing moments of insight into the spirit of something, or else capturing the thing itself like a camera would, as in the familiar statement, ‘ I wish I had my camera.’ There are other contributing factors to why experimental writing in general and the genre of lucid fiction specifically worked for the material.

Lucid experiences, whatever you might call them- from plain and clear observations, to exalted moments of inspiration, to some sort of connection with a place, time, or person, to love, to various paranormal experiences, all the way up to satori and beyond and back again, do not come for the most part in neatly packaged time lines, plot arcs, or character development, and do not lend themselves to the form of regular stories. Experimental writing and forms however, are accepting, and knowing that these forms exist, and that a writer can write in them, is wildly inspirational. This means experience, whatever it is, and however it is perceived, can have a home. These twelve writings, to a regular reader, would be puzzling or frustrating perhaps. But they have their own internal logic, cadence, meaning, form, sense, and purpose, just as the visions, dreams, travels, relationships to people, nature and self, and experience in general that they describe have. And like any creative action, or anything at all in fact, pieces like these reach those they are meant to reach.

The lucid form allows these twelve writings to be themselves. That means that the themes could breathe, and didn’t have to be squeezed into a formulaic narrative. Some of the avenues covered in the writing include the narrator looking back on experiences that are so real as to still be happening. Other parts of the writing are trying to convey what else is happening as a certain experience happens. All in all, the writing is trying to illustrate that many things are happening at the same time. Reality, dreams, interpretations, visions, and more, are all valid. What’s more, they can and do exist together. They do not always play well together, but ideally they integrate, and with the combination of providence and hard work, they can help the writer and the reader to, if even in some small way, or for some acute moment, - ascend.

--------------------------------------------

Brian Michael Barbeito

May 14/ 2011

Aurora, Ontario, Canada

About Brian Michael Barbeito

Brian Michael Barbeito writes experimental fiction. His work has appeared at Our Echo, American Chronicle, A Million Stories, Crimson Highway, Glossolalia, Useless-Knowledge, and Lunatics Folly. He also writes at Six Sentences, Story and Story, Fictionaut, Thinking Ten, Author Nation, and others. He resides in Ontario, Canada.

published May 17 2011

The Difference Between Home and Death

Music. Blaring at a distance, not angry or fast, just loud to be heard through the people, the trees, the campfires crackling. Barefoot girls move hand in hand out of the forest at the back of the clearing, pushing through the last rays of sunlight. They place their feet deliberately, the one squishing through each layer of mud with every step and the other, with longer legs and darker hair, stepping easily around the soft parts in the ground. There are no stars tonight, or moon and the music is swaying gently, lapping at the girls’ feet and swirling away with each new chord, pulling them along. Glowing faces like blue and yellow fish bob around them, hazy through the smoke as they’re lifted gently by the waves and tossed closer to the campfires, their toes reaching for the ground. Voices tune in and laughter orbits before the undertow pulls them away from the fires and back to the dark. Their arms circle and they swim closer to the music. Seaweed tosses in front of their faces, drawing their eyes away, up into the black sky. They surge forward again as the music speeds up into a new song. Entering the mess of gyrating people, their hands lock together and they swirl, crashing slowly against the stage. Laughter, beers cracking open, lighters flicking and crickets trampled with the grass. The music cries out and climbs higher into the sky. Their arms churn, their feet stamp and their bodies make little eddies in that sweet summer air. And then the rain comes calling. It falls, starting in the back of the clearing and washing forward. Water trickles all over the people, between their eyes and down their noses to their navels. It hits the ground and sticks, splashing against ankles. The space between the blades of grass fills first, then the space between people. It floods onto the stage, over amps, adding layers of sound. The clearing is filling; it is full. The girls reach out; they kick off, and swim up—up and up, forever, with the music

Author's Commentary

To capture an experience and the emotions associated with it requires that events be told not as they were, but in the form of how they felt. In this case, an experience far from anything familiar felt like a return home.

About Jess Tibbals Maggi

Jess Tibbals Maggi is alive and kicking in upstate New York. She spends her time growing food and playing with children.

published May 19 2011

Author's Commentary

This is a spoken word piece, a goof in some ways, an experiment in perception in others, but also casting some lefthanded light on the idea, after Chomsky, etc.) that semiotics devolve below the level or words: the meaning somehow distributed among the individual letters and phonemes. A total crock, of course, but worth a moment’s reflection. I wrote the original version of this twenty years ago at a San Diego reading, after some kids had done a big experimental thing typing letters and shouting them at the crowd, then--Roy Schneider a local writer known for queasy brutality--read one of his. I wrote this on the spot, "If the Type Gang had written a Roy Schneider story."

About Linton Robinson

Linton Robinson has been experimenting with, and publishing, fiction and poetry since grade school. His cult column “Flesh Wounds” was noted for blending of fact, fiction and hallucination before wide use of the term “creative non-fiction”. His college years were thwarted by lack of academic acceptance of “molecular” writing, using valenced syllables, “flowchart lit” and other such inventions. His journal Eidolon published some of the major Northwest poets during the late Seventies, when the scene was in full flower and “proto-grunge” poets like Steven Jesse Bernstein and Charley Burks were out of control. His video poems have been published in online journals, and he will release a “book”-length, thematic collection of vid poems this year. His conference workshops have popularized concepts like eBroadsides, ringtone poetry, and wallpaper mixed-media writing. Oddly, his website at http://linrobinson.com is fairly normal.

Your Own Diseaseby Meg Pokrass

One evening your car burped and died. You did not point at the place where the car felt broken. How do you deal with that dog? Your boyfriend says this, his voice like a permanent sticker. Most of your things are already ruined, he says, pointing to the stained tabletop. He wanted an audience perhaps. People to clap and agree, and he says the dog is useless, is way too heavy on "needs" and with hair all over the fucking sofa. It's the worrying, not knowing about whether someone is a specialist on your life, that gets to you. Or what will happen next.

Was the dog heavy from his last life? He was no mystery, just a dog with crater-like love gaps. It did not mean he was broken. Maybe he was a depressed from white dreams which one has right before someone dies. I think of this dog with many open questions, cracked a bit like warped doors. No taking this dog back.

You admit that men can go to the moon but you cannot have a child. The doctors loved you when they said softly in doctor language, that you were sterile.

"Don't tell me to get rid of this dog," you say to your boyfriend. His questions make sense but his answers suck so you expect more, like the cousin who was so generous with his illness -- the way he offered it to you secretly, telling one drunken night under the blacklight poster it was fine to share bong hits. When a man talks to you like that and you feel ugly you answer with your lips. He says "ahhh". You grow up with periods, but they are like broken crockery.

You can't have a regular life, but nothing good stands up to the strong wind, and regular lives wilt. You have seen it, all over the place are lives with dead roots. So when he tells you to fix the car, fix the dog, fix your hair, you keep his words close but make an inner announcement: This life is your own disease, not his to film.

Author's Commentary

I use random words I pull from novels carelessly and write down. About 20 random words. I make myself use them all in the first draft. I write very fast, just getting the stuff down. I don't think about making it "good". My process feels like patchworking old and slightly warped memory combined with purely made-up details. The random words mess things up which is wonderful, they get in the way of the same old stuff coming out. The story takes shape when I edit it, later.

About Meg Pokrass

Meg Pokrass is the author of Damn Sure Right (Press 53 )and serves as Editor-at-Large for BLIP Magazine (formerly Mississippi Review) and before that, for SmokeLong Quarterly. Her stories, poems, and flash fiction animations have appeared in nearly one hundred online and print publications. Meg lives with her small family and seven animals in San Francisco, website at www.megpokrass.com.

published June 2011

7 by Denis Emorine, translated from the French by Phillip John Ushner

Obey !

Let the wind shout its pain through the trees. And if, perchance, the hands of the Gods should twist above the treetops, chop them down and show no pity! Do not give in!

The Trap

Wanting to strip words of their meaning, I almost fell into my own trap. One night, they got into my room. They attacked me, grabbed me by the throat. They tightened their grasp, harder and harder... I struggled vigorously but I couldn’t get my breath. A swarm of letters whirled around me and danced before my crying eyes. Chassed by pain, I beat my head against the walls. Finally, a D and an E fell down onto the carpet, only to take flight right away. Consonants and vowels then flew away on the back of a big L. I was saved. For now.

Truth

I am still unaware what others call me. Is that the truth of the dream? Is that what happens under daylight glow? In any case, what does it matter? Sometimes, I play dice to find out the time of my final demise. So far, another hand had always reached out to stop mine, preventing the dice from spitting the bite of a moment right in my face. When the angry crowd comes requesting a poem, I will open wide my arms, revealing my heart; and they all will be struck down. The ground will open a little to absorb my approval.

Nocturnal

At night, I sometimes open the window of my room. My naked body half swallowed by darkness, I look around me, seeking, waiting. The stars hide away the presence of that god who does not exist at these latitudes. I reach out my hand towards the stars, not to grab one, but merely to a gesture at them.

If, by the greatest of chances, one of them answers me, I feign the most total indifference. At once, the star goes out, mortified. Happy to be almost a demiurge, I shut the window, and go back to bed: I have created a miracle that fits me well. The eyelid closes while the breath of night runs slowly between my fingers, wrapping me in mystery.

The Book

It was one of those days when the sky leans back on itself ready to launch up still higher; one of those days when birdsong echoes nothing but pure vacuum, when the ground expels man from its meanders, forcing him to take shelter in his home. Alone in the garden, I refused to believe what was so obvious. The hours went by, pointing at me with a disapproving finger.

Darkness filled my head. Submissive, I decided to go back home. The open book awaited me, open to the right page. At once, I took refuge in its arms.

On the Obvious

I always thought I needed very little to live: a pinch of blue on half-open lips, a flower married to a book’s curves, the curve fortunately making the path from point to point a little longer... All things considered, all was already traced on the wheat sheaf of silence. All one has to do is to place one’s lips on the wheat sheaf, with resolution and free of ideas.

And then the clap of thunder caught up with me. Initially I tried to pretend, to get around it all by taming time. The halter securely fastened—I had to give in to the obvious—is the only judge on the matter.

Fever

Only a few of you had any esteem for me. That’s for sure: the river banks around me smelled of corpses. Tears could not bring you back, not really. I tried to clasp you in my arms but you were soon taken over with pain; the pain would rise in you attacking the sleepless nights. You felt awkward at seeing me fly in such a manner, the arms in a cross, above the words.

Know that I hold nothing against you. I got rid of that weapon cushioned by a pillow—too obliging. The nape of my neck, made painful, could no longer support the accusing finger.

Very few of your had any esteem for me. Only silence has the bedside manner needed to respond to words broken down by their plenitude.

Author's Commentary

Many years ago, I was suffering from insomnia. One night, while lying awake, numerous ideas and some bunches of words came to me. It was a curious sensation that would be impossible to describe in simple and precise words.Each night, the same thing repeated itself. Finally, I decided to note those words and wrote some short shorts as if they were dictated to me by an unknown voice. During the night, life is quite different. A simple noise in the house, a crack of a door for example, seems completely different than by day. This noise seems mysterious because of the quality of the silence. I remember one of my texts about my imaginary meeting with Franz Kafka who was suspended in the air in front of the window of my room. The narrator –me- was living in an apartment on the fifth floor! In “Truth” the narrator is unable to find his identity. Other people fall in an attempt to help –or to kill – him, at both maybe. What is dream? What is reality? Are they really so opposite?In my short shorts, each fact such as the meeting with a dead writer in this case Kafka, is described as normal, quite normal and I would say, simple. I’m not sure I can write fantastic tales or something like that but I’m sure insomnia has helped me find this kind of inspiration in any case.

About Denis Emorine

Denis Emorine is the author of short stories, essays, poetry, and plays. He was born in 1956 in Paris and studied literature at the Sorbonne (University of Paris). He has an affective relationship to English because his mother was an English teacher. His father was of Russian ancestry. His works are translated into several languages. His theatrical output has been staged in France, Canada ( Quebec) and Russia. Many of his books (stories, drama, poetry) have been published in the USA. Writing, for Emorine, is a way of harnessing time in its incessant flight. Themes that re-occur throughout his writing include the Doppelgänger, lost or shattered identity, and mythical Venice (a place that truly fascinates him). He also has a great interest for Eastern Europe. Denis Emorine collaborates with various other reviews and literary websites in the U.S., Europe and Japan both in French and in English.. In 2004, he won first prize for his poetry at the HYPERLINK "http://www.dlrcoco.ie/library/" \t "_blank" Féile Filiochta International competition. His poetry has been published in Pphoo (India), Blue Beat Jacket (Japan), Magnapoets (Canada), Snow Monkey, Cokefishing, Be Which Magazine, Poesia and Journal of ExperimentalFiction(USA) His texts also appear on numerous e-zines such as: Anemone Sidecar,Cipher Journal, Mad Hatters' Review, Milk, The Salt River Review, Istanbul Literary Review, Like Birds Lit,Wilderness House Literary Review.

About Phillip John Usher

Phillip John Usher is Assistant Professor of French and Comparative Literature. His book Errance et cohérence: essai sur la littérature transfrontalière à la Renaissance (Paris: Classiques Garnier, forthcoming 2010) deals with the topic of Renaissance border-crossing and globalization. As a translator, he is the author of the first English-language version of Ronsard’s epic La Franciade (1572) (New York: AMS Press, forthcoming 2010) and of Denis Emorine’s No through world (Edmonds, WA: Ravenna Press, 2004). He has also translated various academic and non-academic articles and works. His articles have appeared or are forthcoming in the Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, La Revue des Amis de Ronsard, L’Esprit Créateur, French Forum, and elsewhere. Educated at the University of London (UK) and Harvard University (Cambridge, MA), he regularly lectures in the United States and Europe and has held a visiting position at Boston University (fall 2009). He regularly organizes lectures in the “Translation Across the Disciplines” series and is the webmaster for the Barnard Center of Translation Studies.